Stage 6: Emmersdorf – Melk

The pilgrimage church in Emmersdorf obviously has a very Christian spirit because the church bells only started to ring at 7 a.m. 🤣 Since we had a short trip ahead we took our time and had breakfast at 8 a.m. …

The breakfast at the Pemmerhof was awesome! Fruits and vegetables from the own garden, a lot of home-made jams, home-made apricot curd strudel, boiled eggs… We ate and talked a lot with our lovely innkeeper so that we only started today’s hike way past 10 a.m. 😱 We even got apples right of the tree with us on the way! 💚

The trail took us through Emmersdorf, up the hill and straight into the forest again.

After about 4km we had reached the highest point of today and since the trail app said something about a lookout with a great view in all directions we decided to make a short detour.

Well, that was the lookout:

There would’ve definitely been a great view done but guess what? It’s been temporarily closed for safety reasons. SINCE 2018! 🤦

So, no view. On we went, now a steep and overgrown path down towards the Danube again. There were millions of stinging nettles which even burned through our hiking trousers! 😫 We just ran quickly down and emerged near the Danube at the Schloß Luberegg:

Then we hiked along something similar to the Donauinsel in Vienna and made a short break (not that we needed it or were hungry but we had enough time today 🤣) admiring the Abbey of Melk in the distance.

We also ate our last holy Mohnzelten:

Then we hiked along this Donauinsel of Melk like 5km on flat terrain before arriving in Melk at last:

After finding our apartment for this night in an incredibly quiet small street (we even could see a bit of the Abbey from our balcony) we went shopping and afterwards decided to make a tour through the Abbey and its gardens.

The Abbey really is huge with a great multimedia exhibition and wonderful exhibits, the library with incredibly old and valuable books, and the view down on Melk and the Wachau was priceless!

After the tour we ate at the Abbey’s restaurant. It wasn’t cheap but they had wonderful vegetarian dishes and it tasted great!

Since today was the last Wednesday of this summer’s “Gartensommernächte” in the Abbey’s gardens and the entrance was included with our ticket to the Abbey we stayed for the event. There was live music, something to eat and drink and we made “Steckerlbrot” at a camp fire. It was really enjoyable!

We wandered around in the gardens for a while before we got cold and tired and decided to call it a day.